Has the current presidential administration doomed our future?

[Ned]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Has the current presidential administration doomed our future?

Originally posted by Cyclotron


And other than invading in the first place?

C, are you in the camp that Bush LIED?

Or, are you an honest person?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Kidicious


In other words you must have deficits as long as the economy is growing to keep up with the growth.

?

Kid, I hope you will agree that demand drives growth and that to keep growing you have to keep demand up. Suddenly sucking a lot of liquidity out of a growing economy will have a certain effect. We experienced that between 2000 and 2003.

[Ned]

Well Rufus and Imran, Hoover did more than do nothing. He actively tried to balance the budget in a collapsing economy.

FDR did the same thing.

Which is why this country did not come out of the recession until we started spending for WWII.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Hey that's pretty cool. I've always wanted to have an agenda.

I've always had an agenda. I like to refer to it as long-term self-preservation.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Victor Galis


I've always had an agenda. I like to refer to it as long-term self-preservation.

An ultimately futile agenda, if you ask me. No matter what, you're gonna die.

[Master Zen]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Has the current presidential administration doomed our future

Originally posted by Ned


C, are you in the camp that Bush LIED?

Or, are you an honest person?

This reply makes it all the more evident that continuing discussion is, as the Borg would say... futile.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ned


?

Kid, I hope you will agree that demand drives growth and that to keep growing you have to keep demand up. Suddenly sucking a lot of liquidity out of a growing economy will have a certain effect. We experienced that between 2000 and 2003.

This is the seasonally adjusted US currency in billions. What the hell are you talking about?

1998-Jan. 426.5
Feb. 429.0
Mar. 431.0
Apr. 432.8
May 435.0
June 437.8
July 441.2
Aug. 443.8
Sep. 449.0
Oct. 452.9
Nov. 456.3
Dec. 459.8
1999-Jan. 462.5
Feb. 466.6
Mar. 470.9
Apr. 474.9
May 479.2
June 482.7
July 486.5
Aug. 490.1
Sep. 494.3
Oct. 498.9
Nov. 505.3
Dec. 517.8
2000-Jan. 524.9
Feb. 518.1
Mar. 516.9
Apr. 517.8
May 519.3
June 521.3
July 522.6
Aug. 522.8
Sep. 524.0
Oct. 526.2
Nov. 528.2
Dec. 531.2

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=Rufus]There's abundant evidence that he considered a range of options in dealing with the Depression, and actively chose to do nothing, largely for ideological reasons (free market and all that).[/q]

Incorrect. Hoover started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was a precusor to the New Deal. It was far, far, far from being a free market policy. It was basically a government lender to businesses which were feeling the crunch, first banks and financial institutions, but expanded to other areas later.

Hoover gets a lot of inaccurate attributions of being a 'free market type' when his record indicates different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover

[q=wikipedia]Even if the Hoover presidency has a negative imprint on it, it must be noted that there were some important reforms under the Hoover administration.

The President expanded civil service protection, cancelled private oil leases on government lands and led the way for the prosecution of gangster Al Capone. He appointed a commission which set aside 3 million acres (12,000 km²) of national parks and 2.3 million of national forests; he appointed a Federal Farm Board that tried to fix farm prices; advocated tax reduction for low-income Americans; doubled the numbers of veteran hospital facilities; negotiated a treaty on St. Lawrence Seaway (which failed in the Senate); signed an act that made The Star-Spangled Banner the national anthem; wrote a Children's Charter that advocated protection of every child regardless of race or gender; built the San Francisco Bay Bridge; created an antitrust division in the Justice Department; required air mail carriers to improve service; proposed federal loans for urban slum clearances; organized the Federal Bureau of Prisons; reorganized the Bureau of Indian Affairs; proposed a federal Department of Education; advocated fifty-dollar-a-month pensions for Americans over 65; chaired White House conferences on child health, protection, homebuilding and homeownership. He also signed the Norris-La Guardia Act that limited judicial intervention in labor disputes.

Hoover's humanitarian and Quaker reputation--along with a native American vice president--gave special meaning to his Indian policies. He had spent part of his childhood in proximity to Indians in Oklahoma, and his Quaker upbringing influenced his views that Native Americans needed to achieve economic self-sufficiency. As president, he appointed Charles J. Rhoads as commissioner of Indian affairs. Hoover supported Rhoads's commitment to Indian assimilation and sought to minimize the federal role in Indian affairs. His goal was having Indians acting as individuals (not as tribes) assume the responsibilities of citizenship which had been granted in 1924. [Britten 1999]

In the foreign arena, Hoover began formulating what would be known as the Good Neighbor Policy by withdrawing American troops from Nicaragua and Haiti; he also proposed an arms embargo on Latin America and a one-third reduction in the world's naval forces--the Hoover Plan. He and Secretary of State Henry Stimson outlined the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine that said the United States would not recognize territories gained by force.[/q]

[q=wikipedia]Soon after the crash, Hoover summoned industrialists to the White House and secured promises to maintain wages. Henry Ford even agreed to increase workers' daily pay from six to seven dollars. From the nation's utilities, Hoover won commitments of $1.8 billion in new construction and repairs for 1930. Railroad executives made a similar pledge. Organized labor agreed to withdraw its latest wage demands. The President ordered federal departments to speed up construction projects. He contacted all forty-eight state governors to make a similar appeal for expanded public works. He went to Congress with a $160 million tax cut, coupled with a doubling of resources for public buildings and dams, highways and harbors.

Praise for the President's intervention was widespread. "No one in his place could have done more," concluded the New York Times in the spring of 1930. "Very few of his predecessors could have done as much." On February 18 Hoover announced that the preliminary shock had passed, and that employment was on the mend.[/q]

[q=wikipedia]In order to pay for these and other government programs, Hoover agreed to one of the largest tax increases in American history. The Revenue Act of 1932 raised taxes on the highest incomes from 25% to 63%. The estate tax was doubled and corporate taxes were raised by almost 15%. Also, a "check tax" was included that placed a 2-cent tax (over 30 cents in today's dollars) on all bank checks[/q]

[q=wikipedia]During the 1932 elections, Franklin D. Roosevelt blasted the Republican incumbent for spending and taxing too much, increasing national debt, raising tariffs and blocking trade, as well as placing millions on the dole of the government. Roosevelt attacked Hoover for "reckless and extravagant" spending, of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible," and of leading "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history." Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, accused the Republican of "leading the country down the path of socialism".[/q]

[q=wikipedia]Even so, New Dealer Rexford Tugwell [1] later remarked that although no one would say so at the time, "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."[/q]

Hoover gets a very bad rap for doing nothing. If anything he tried, but probably didn't go far enough, and what he did try didn't work all that great.

And on the other issue, I disagree with you that inaction is as bad as deciding on a horrid action. Sometimes the precedent of what a President should do is what leads to inaction. There can be a stigma to being too activist in expanding executive power. For that reason sometimes inaction is because the President doesn't feel he has the power to do what others did after him.

[Arrian]

Good to see things are still upside down in the Nediverse.

-Arrian

[Kidlicious]

Hoover was much too supply side, and couldn't think outside of his religious principles. There's plenty to blame him for.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You can't blame him for 'doing nothing' though, which too many people... which is my point.

[Ned]

Kid, I count debt as money.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Arrian
Good to see things are still upside down in the Nediverse.

-Arrian

By that I assume you agree that Bush lied.

[Q Classic]

I do, Ned. But it depends on what topic one is discussing specifically.

[Q Classic]

But the real reason we hear about the Japanese today and not about the Germans and Italians is that it fulfills an underlying leftist agenda to prove that America is racist.

...

Since you and I said the same thing, we seem to agree on the facts.

But, the excuse given at the time was that even for American Japanese, the Emperor was a God and that their loyalty could not be assured if given a choice between America and their Emperor.

Now, you can debate this point, but it certainly is not irrational.

Except that excuse was irrational--borne of misunderstanding and exclusionary notions of what was considered "American".